A fearful vision follows a weak premise

Rating: 7/10 (7 July 2003)

With the weak premise of a virus that produces murderous rage in seconds behind, the movie "28 Days Later" proceeds to sufficiently apall and frighten its viewers. The premise-monkeys with a rage-producing virus in their blood, are turned loose by some misdirected animal lovers who are immediately attacked and bitten by the monkeys. Those who survive become within seconds "the infecteds" who will search for someone to kill-or failing to kill-will create another infected human.
We meet our hero, Cillian Murphy, as he awakens from an accident that had kept him-a bicycle courier-in a coma for 28 days. He finds himself in an apparently deserted London. The views of him alone in the city's vastness-surrounded by upended vehicles, garbage, and complete disorganization-are eerily threatening and photographed quite well.

He soon finds plenty of dead people in a church and after saying "Hello" hesitantly is assaulted by a murderous priest, and some others. He is rescued by two uninfected humans who blow up the pursuers. The female rescuer, Naomi Harris, explains the situation to Murphy while not releasing her hold on a machete. This comes in handy shortly thereafter, when she must kill her partner after he is bitten by an infected human.

Apparently the virus has spread all over Britain. There is no TV or radio, nor any government. Survival is paramount, and director Danny Boyle keeps the action moving briskly.
Shot in digital video, the film looks like nothing you've seen before-a greater sense of the immediate, perhaps. Murphy soon becomes a survivor like Harris, and with some others, they make their way to a possible military facility they've learned about on a recorded radio broadcast. It soon becomes a question of whether they have made a sensible move.

While we know that viruses take time to make people sick, the times we live in now and the threat of bioterror make this film all the more watchable and interesting.